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had placed Medicine on a rational basis. In the six 

 hundred years' space which elapsed before the appear- 

 ance of Galen, Medicine was broken up into many rival 

 schools. The Dogmatici and the Empirici for many 

 years wrangled undisturbed, but shortly after the 

 Christian era the Methodici entered the field, to be 

 followed later on by the Eclectici and a troop of other 

 sects, whose wranglings, and whose very names, are now 

 forgotten. In his History of Medicine, Dr. Bostock 

 gives a sketch of the attitude of Galen towards the rival 

 schools. " In his general principles he may be con- 

 sidered as belonging to the Dogmatic sect, for his 

 method was to reduce all his knowledge,, as acquired by 

 the observation of facts, to general theoretical principles. 

 These principles he indeed professed to deduce from 

 experience and observation, 1 and we have abundant 

 proofs of his diligence in collecting experience and his 

 accuracy in making observations ; but still, in a certain 

 sense at least, he regards individual facts and the details 

 of experience as of little value, unconnected with the 

 principles which he laid down as the basis of all medical 

 reasoning. In this fundamental point, therefore, the 

 method pursued by Galen appears to have been directly 

 the reverse of that which we now consider as the correct 

 method of scientific investigation ; and yet, such is the 

 force of actual genius, that in most instances he attained 

 the ultimate object in view, although by an indirect 

 path. He was an admirer of Hippocrates, and always 

 speaks of him with the most profound respect, pro- 

 fessing to act upon his principles, and to do little more 



1 " Galen's great complaint against the Peripatetics or Aristo- 

 telians, was that while they discoursed about Anatomy they could 

 not dissect. He met an argument with a dissection or an experi- 

 ment. Come and see for yourselves, was his constant cry." 

 Harveian Oration^ Dr. J. F. Payne, 1896. 



